From what I see, you're trying to pass an argument to the PHP script that runs on the command line.

In the command line, $_GET is not used to access arguments from a script. You should use the $argv variable to access these arguments.

Passing and accessing the arguments

Create a file cmd.php , do the following:

print_r($argv);

Run from the command line:

>>> php cmd.php 1 2 3

The result will be:

Array
(
    [0] => cmd.php
    [1] => 1
    [2] => 2
    [3] => 3
)

Note that the first argument of $argv is the name of the script that is running. This is always so.

If you want to get only the arguments after the script, you can use array_slice , like this:

print_r(array_slice($argv, 1))

When you run script php via command line, each item separated by a space after php is considered an argument of the command.

That is, you will not use the ? query as you do in the case of browser query strings.

But what if I want to pass an argument that has space?

If you want to pass an argument that contains a literal space, you can use the quotation marks to delimit the argument.

So:

>>> php cmd.php "olá mundo"

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => cmd.php
    [1] => olá mundo
)

What if I want to pass quotation marks as an argument?

Then you have to escape with \ .

Example:

>>> php cmd.php "olá \""

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => cmd.php
    [1] => olá "
)

And before you ask me "How to escape the bar too", I anticipate you just use another bar.

Example:

  >>> php cmd.php \My\Namespace

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => cmd.php
    [1] => \My\Namespace
)

Counting passed arguments

To count the number of arguments, you can also use the $argc variable.

Create a count_args.php file to test and put the following:

  print_r($argc)

Run from the command line:

 >>> php count_args.php 1 2 3 4

The result will be:

5

Nothing also prevents you from using count($argv) to count the arguments.